I remain saddened by the number of Republicans who refuse to open their eyes and see the descent of the Republican Party into something truly ugly - and very, very dangerous. While many refuse to face the reality, there are historic parallels that ought to be setting off alarm bells. While Donald Trump may not be Hitler reincarnated, his rhetoric and the hate and division he sows are very reminiscent of how Hitler came to power by playing on fears, attacking society elites, and scapegoating segments of society. Now, like the "good Germans" of the late 1920's and early 1930's, far too many "good Republicans" are allowing ugliness to flourish. A excellent, but lengthy piece in the New Yorker looks at the frightening parallels. Here are highlights:

The
best show in New York right now may be the Guggenheim’s retrospective of the
work of László Moholy-Nagy (pronounced “nadge,” not “nadgy,” a lesson hard
learned). Born to a Jewish family in Hungary in 1895, he assimilated all the
advances and visual novelties of the early part of the twentieth century, from
Russia and Paris alike, and turned them into an adaptable graphic manner that
made him one of the indispensable teachers at the Bauhaus, in Dessau, Germany,
in the nineteen-twenties, under Walter Gropius. When Hitler came to power, this
citizen of cosmopolitanism then emigrated— . . .

[T]he
Weimar Republic gets a very bad rap for how it ended and insufficient credit
for how much creative ferment and intelligent thought it contained. The notion
that it was above all, or unusually, decadent was a creation of its enemies,
who defined the creative energies of cosmopolitanism in that way. All republics are fragile; the German one, like
the Third French Republic it paralleled, did not commit suicide—it was killed,
by many murderers, not least by those who thought they could contain an
authoritarian thirsting for power.

[We]
find ourselves back in a uniquely frightening moment in American life. A
candidate for President who is the announced enemy of the openness that America
has traditionally stood for and that drew persecuted émigrés like Moholy-Nagy
to America as to a golden land, a candidate who embraces the mottos and
rhetoric of the pro-fascist groups of that same wretched time, has taken over
one of our most venerable political parties, and he seems still in the
ascendancy. His language remains not merely sloppy or incendiary but
openly hostile to the simplest standards of truth and decency that have
governed American politics. Most recently, just this week, he has repeated the
lie that there has been a call for “a moment of silence” in honor of the
murderer of five policemen in Dallas.

This
ought to be, as people said quaintly just four or five months ago,
“disqualifying.” Nonetheless, his takeover of the Republican Party is complete,
and, in various postures of spinelessness, its authorities accede to his
authority, or else opportunistically posture for a place in the wake of it.
Many of them doubtless assume that he will lose and are hoping for a better
position afterward—still, the very small show of backbone that would be required
to resist his takeover seems unavailable.

What
is genuinely alarming is the urge, however human it may be, to normalize
the abnormal by turning toward emotions and attitudes that are familiar. To
their great credit, the editors of most of the leading conservative
publications in America have recognized Trump for what he is, and have opposed
his rise to power. Yet the habit of hatred is so ingrained in their
psyches that even those who recognize at some level that Trump is a horror,
when given the dangling bait of another chance to hate Hillary still leap at it,
. . . attempting to equate this normal politician with an abnormal threat to
political life itself. They do this, in part, to placate their readership. In
the so-called mainstream (call it liberal) media, meanwhile, the election is
treated with blithe inconsequence, as another occasion for strategy-weighing.

Trump
is unstable, a liar, narcissistic, contemptuous of the basic norms of political
life, and deeply embedded among the most paranoid and irrational of conspiracy
theorists. There may indeed be a pathos to his followers’ dreams of some
populist rescue for their plights. But he did not come to political attention
as a “populist”; he came to politics as a racist, a proponent of birtherism.

[T]o
call him [Trump] a fascist of some variety is simply to use a historical label
that fits. The arguments about whether he meets every point in some static
fascism matrix show a misunderstanding of what that ideology involves. .
. . . What all forms of fascism have in common is the glorification of the
nation, and the exaggeration of its humiliations, with violence promised to its
enemies, at home and abroad; the worship of power wherever it appears and
whoever holds it; contempt for the rule of law and for reason; unashamed
employment of repeated lies as a rhetorical strategy; and a promise of
vengeance for those who feel themselves disempowered by history. It promises to
turn back time and take no prisoners. That it can appeal to those who do not
understand its consequences is doubtless true.

But
the first job of those who do understand is to state what those consequences
invariably are. Those who think that the underlying institutions of American
government are immunized against it fail to understand history. In every
historical situation where a leader of Trump’s kind comes to power, normal
safeguards collapse. Ours are older and therefore stronger? Watching the rapid
collapse of the Republican Party is not an encouraging rehearsal. Donald Trump
has a chance to seize power.

No
reasonable person, no matter how opposed to her politics, can believe for a
second that Clinton’s accession to power would be a threat to the Constitution
or the continuation of American democracy. No reasonable person can believe
that Trump’s accession to power would not be.

Once again religion, and fundamentalist Islam in particular, is proving that it is a scourge on humanity, as the ISIS claims responsibility for the mass murders in Nice, France on the night of July 14, 2016. The Washington Post looks at the claim and also the Tunisian citizen who murdered so many, including 10 children. Like the shooter in Orlando, he seems to have been a loser with a failed marriage and even a petty criminal record but without known ties to ISIS or extremists. If the facts play out, it will be another example of religion preying on losers and promising them rewards in an afterlife with a mythical, magical friend in the sky. It's pitiful. Yet over the centuries religion, including Christianity, has made such promises over and over again. Also note that in the body of the piece ISIS references the crusaders who slaughtered Muslims nearly a thousand years ago. The toxicity of religion simply never ends. Here are highlights from the Post story:

NICE, France —The Islamic State on Saturday claimed
responsibility for an attack that killed 84 in this coastal French city, the
organization’s news agency said Saturday, as French prosecutors took three more
people into custody in connection with the attack.

It remained
unclear whether the Islamic State had directed the attack, whether they were
taking responsibility for an attack that they may have inspired, or whether
they were simply seeking publicity from an attack entirely disconnected from
them. The Islamic-State-connected Amaq news agency cited an “insider source”
saying that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, “was a soldier of the Islamic
State.” The Islamic-State-connected Amaq news agency cited an “insider source”
saying that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, “was a soldier of the Islamic
State.” “He
executed the operation in response to calls to target citizens of coalition
nations that fight the Islamic State,” the news agency wrote.

But the oblique
claim of responsibility left open the question of whether Bouhlel had acted
alone or had any prior communication with the group, which has also claimed
ties to the attacks that struck Paris twice last year and Brussels in March.
French authorities have been scrambling to determine whether Bouhlel had a
support network in Nice, where he appears to have been living for at least six
years.

Investigators on
Saturday detained three additional people in connection with the attack,
including one person who is believed to have spoken to Bouhlel by phone minutes
before he started his deadly journey down Nice’s Promenade des Anglais,
and an additional man was detained late Friday, according to the office of
Paris prosecutor François Molins. Authorities also detained Bouhlel’s
ex-wife Friday and were questioning her.

The scale of the
carnage wrought by a Bouhlel came into grim focus Friday, with 10 children
among the dead and 202 people injured. Among the wounded, 50 were “between life
and death,” according to French President François Hollande.

The attack with
a 19-ton rented Renault truck — the third mass casualty assault to hit to
France in 18 months — shocked the nation and sparked questions about whether
authorities had done enough to safeguard a country that is an obvious target of
terrorist groups.

The
identities of the victims testified to France’s diverse society and to the
international appeal of the tony French Riviera. A vacationing father and his
11-year-old son from Lakeway, Tex. A headscarf-wearing Muslim woman who came to
celebrate Bastille Day with her nieces and nephews. A French high school
teacher, his wife, daughter and grandson. Others from Russia, Switzerland,
Germany, Australia.

Bouhlel
was a Tunisian citizen who had lived in Nice since at least 2010, when he first
ran afoul of authorities by engaging in petty theft, according to Molins, the
prosecutor. Most recently, he had been given a suspended six-month prison
sentence related to a January assault, Molins said. In that case, Bouhlel’s
former attorney told the local Nice-Matin newspaper, a motorist complained the
truck driver was blocking the road during a delivery. Bouhlel took a swing at
the motorist with a wooden beam, causing a deep wound, according to the
lawyer’s account. Bouhlel is divorced and has three children, neighbors said.
The prosecutor said the suspect’s ex-wife was taken in for questioning.

Having staked his campaign on rally angry whites who are terrified of losing their white privilege and/or the ability to inflict their right wing religious beliefs on all Americans, Donald Trump has cynically picked Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate. Other than experience in Congress where he voted for some things Trump claims to oppose, the only real value Pence brings is the fact that he is a white Christofascist's dream candidate given his stand on abortion which he would outlaw in all cases and his animus towards the LGBT community. The New York Times looks at Pence's selection in a main editorial. Here are excerpts:

The suspicions that Mr. Trump stirs among evangelicals made Mr. Pence,
who was one of the most socially conservative members of the House in his six
terms there, the most strategic pick among the uninspiring politicians on Mr.
Trump’s shortlist. He is a better bet than the thrice-married, ethically
compromised Newt Gingrich, or the unpopular,
politically damaged Chris Christie.
Unassuming and affable — until his Twitter
account exploded with Hillary Clinton attacks this week — Mr. Pence knows
how Washington works. And unlike the talkative and bewildering Sarah Palin, who never made it to the
shortlist or to the convention speaker lineup, he won’t hog the spotlight or
embarrass the boss.

Above all, Mr. Trump’s
choice of Mr. Pence is a gesture to Republicans whose money he needs to win,
and a move to pacify any conservatives who were scheming to derail his
nomination at the convention until they were thwarted by party officials this
week. But having the Indiana governor on the ticket does little to convince a
struggling middle class that Mr. Trump aims to force the party into its corner.

Mr. Trump does not offer any real policies for creating jobs, and he
has been faulted for his treatment of his own employees, but he does at least
talk about the pain people are feeling. That’s more than can be said for Mr.
Pence. Take the Carrier heating equipment factory in Mr. Pence’s own state.
When it announced
this year that it would move to Mexico and cut 1,400 Indiana jobs, Mr.
Trump predicted that if he were president, Carrier would call “within 24
hours,” to say, “‘Sir, we’ve decided to stay in the United States.’”

What
was Mr. Pence doing while workers in his state were worrying about their
futures? He and the State Legislature were busy waging battle against same-sex
marriage and passing the Religious Freedom
Restoration Act, seen as a means for businesses to deny services to
same-sex couples. The law was amended within days, after a national uproar and
a corporate boycott that tourism
officials estimated cost
Indiana’s economy at least $60 million in lost convention business.

While in Congress, Mr. Pence endorsed the Trans-Pacific Partnership
and other trade pacts that Mr. Trump rails about. He voted for the Iraq war,
which Mr. Trump says he opposed. A staunch anti-abortion conservative, in 2011
Mr. Pence led
House Republicans’ efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, which helped
convince many Americans that Congress would rather engage in partisan
brinkmanship than work on solving the country’s problems.

A poll
last week found that only 12 percent of voters said Mr. Pence’s name on the
ticket would make them more likely to cast a ballot for Mr. Trump. Among
Republican voters 22 percent said it would.

For
Mr. Pence’s audition in Indianapolis this week, he made
a speech introducing Mr. Trump as a man who has “never forgotten or
forsaken the people who work with their hands.” That’s surprising, since Mr.
Trump’s record of forsaking working people is rather long. With Mr. Pence on
the ticket, it gets only longer.

As for the Trump/Pence logo, some are having a field day about it standing for toilet paper and insinuated other hysterical things about the insertion of the "T" into the "P."

Living in Virginia, a "battleground state," we are already seeing plenty of presidential campaign ads, although most to date - other than a foul and dishonest ad being run by the NRA - are for Democrat Hillary Clinton. So far, the ads have been first class and effective, focusing in large part on Donald Trump's unfitness for office, especially the presidency. With the Democrat convention not far off and providing an opportunity to counter whatever batshitery - and potential circus - that takes place in Cleveland, Hillary needs to come up with a knock them dead speech. Hopefully, she rises to the challenge. A piece in Politico looks at the process for a candidate who (like myself) doesn't truly like public speaking notwithstanding her command of the facts. Here are highlights:

Hillary Clinton was about to get clobbered in the New
Hampshire primary, and her campaign still didn’t have a message explaining why
she was the right person for the job.

The entire episode illustrated Clinton’s
paradox: on the one hand, she’s a deeply involved candidate who trusts her own
instincts. But on the other, she still struggles, after all these years, when
it comes to messaging — and remains almost hostile to the idea of a narrative
that Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and even Donald Trump seem
to craft so naturally.

But after Schwerin and Sullivan pushed back, telling her they believed
“Breaking Down Barriers” was her best chance at turning things around, and
Chelsea piped up and took their side, a skeptical Clinton agreed that if
Schwerin wrote it up into a speech, she would give it a shot in her concession
speech that night.

Today, campaign officials credit
that framework with stabilizing the campaign during the darkest days of the
primary — and even Clinton eventually agreed to make it her rubric as the
primary headed toward the South.

In truth, the concept was fine but
not great. “Breaking Down Barriers didn’t set the country on fire, but it gave
us a construct and argument,” said a top Clinton official. “It was a way of
focusing ourselves.”

But it’s also deeper than just a speechwriting
problem — it's about how the most experienced person to ever run for the White
House continues to struggle with one of the most basic parts of the job:
committing to a message that helps establish a general sense of affection from
the electorate.

Clinton is fortunate in that the problem is diminished in this year’s general
election — campaigning as the anti-Trump has quickly consolidated Democratic
support over the past six weeks. And she has connected, at moments, with the
history-making aspect of her run, speaking emotionally about the influence of
her mother, Dorothy Rodham.

But the struggle continues as she
tries to find her voice — one day preaching a mantra of “love and kindness,”
the next positioning herself as a street fighter. And it falls on Schwerin,
Sullivan and their speechwriting team, whose daily assignment is to craft
speeches for a reluctant candidate who would feel more comfortable giving a
policy seminar.

Now Clinton confronts one of the
biggest speeches of her campaign to date: the convention address, where
she will accept the party nomination. Democrats close to the campaign said she
can probably slide by with a paint-by-numbers anti-Trump screed. But they’re
hoping she is able to do something more — to articulate a message that makes
her something more than "likeable enough."

But even the more methodical and wonky Clinton seems to understand the need for
something bigger than herself, and beyond dry policy details, on convention
night.

Ahead of her speech on the night she
clinched the Democratic nomination, for instance, Clinton told Schwerin to
capture some of what she saw on rope lines across the country: fathers bringing
their daughters to witness history. "Bigger," was her main feedback,
draft after draft. She wanted the speech to to stand apart from any standard
primary night victory speech. It was Schwerin who suggested using her mother,
Dorothy Rodham, as the emotional core of the address, which Clinton latched
onto.

The general election slogan, “Stronger Together,” will be the binding theme of
her convention address, aides said. The challenge for Schwerin in the coming
weeks will be how to put meat on those bones.

“Hillary’s challenge is to make
‘stronger together’ more than a bumper sticker or a tagline for an ad,” Favreau
said. “She has to own it. She has to make it hers. And that means vividly and
passionately painting a picture of what ‘stronger together’ looks like for
America. ‘Change We Can Believe In’ by itself was nothing to write home about.
It only worked because Obama was always ready with specific examples, policies,
and stories that helped illustrate what change really meant.”

While The Donald is claiming that he has not yet selected his VP running mate, most speculation is that it will be Indiana governor Mike Pence - a man who is no friend to the LGBT community and who set off a fire storm with corporate America when he signed Indiana's falsely named "religious freedom" law last year. Naturally, given the GOP's most extreme and anti-gay platform every, Pence is the choice of most Christofascists, including those here in Virginia who often rally under the flag of The Family Foundation, a hate group in all but formal designation. A piece in Salon looks at Pence and why he is a perfect fit for Trump's racist and xenophobic agenda. Here are excerpts:

A lowly pool has been reduced to four B-list
candidates: Mike Pence, Newt Gingrich, Chris Christie, and Jeff Sessions, three
of whom found their way to Indianapolis on Wednesday (Christie reportedly spoke
with Trump over the phone). You could make a case for all four. As Iwrotelast week, both Newt and
Christie are plagued by scandals (much like Trump) and have bottomed out as
politicians. Neither has much to lose at this point, which makes joining
Trump’s dumpster fire campaign less risky. Sessions is a largely unknown
conservative senator from Alabama. An anti-immigration culture warrior, he was
among the first Republicans topubliclyendorse Trump. But he’s the obvious
outsider here. Of the final four, Sessions seems least likely to get the nod.

Although it’s still
unofficial, The Washington Post is reportingthat Pence is the pick. If true, that
makes the most sense for Trump, and here’s why.

First, we have to
remember that Trump’s campaign is essentially a TV production. As such, he
needs a hype man, someone who can pump propaganda without overshadowing the
star of the show. . . . The Republican nominee wants an “attack
dog,” but not someone who can upstage him. Both Gingrich and Christie, in their
own ways, are capable of this.

Pence, however,
appears quite comfortable playing second fiddle, and he clearly wants the job.
He’s prostrated himself before Trump, lobbying about as hard as any candidate
I’ve seen. And hisTwitterfeed is littered with over-the-top
pleas. . . . Normally, VP nominees feign
indifference, dismissing inquiries or referring reporters to the presidential
candidates. The idea is to express interest without careening into desperation.
But this is not how Pence rolls. . . . Right out of the gate, Pence
lavished praise on Trump, making it all about him.

If Pence believes Trump
is the greatest leader since Reagan, why did heendorseTed Cruz for president 10 weeks ago? Trump “never
turned his back on Main Street”? We know Trumploves“the
poorly educated,” but I doubt that’s what Pence means by “Main Street.” We know
Trump hasoutsourcedmuch of
his labor in order to cut costs and avoid paying American workers a livable
wage. Was that a boon for “Main Street?” We know that Trump inherited $40
million dollars from his father and has now convinced hordes of working-class
whites that he feels their pain and knows their struggle. Perhaps that’s what
Pence is referencing here. . . . The goal was to show Trump how
effectively he can wag the pom poms. On that score, he succeeded.

There’s another, perhaps more obvious reason why Pence
wants this job: He might lose his. After his disastrous attempt to impose the
anti-LGBT Religious Freedom Restoraction Act on Indianans in 2015, Pence’s
popularity has plummeted. Even the business community turned against him.
According to a Maypoll, his
approval rating is down to 40 percent, with only 60 percent of Republicans
supporting his re-election. The Indiana GOP would be happy to dispense with
Pence and make way for a more attractive candidate.

In any event, a man
this shameless in his pursuit of the nomination suits Trump well. Trump likes
lackeys, and he appears to have found one in Pence. And because he’s staring
down defeat in his home state, a VP nomination is an escape hatch for the
Indiana governor, a chance to skirt failure and boost his national brand. Pence
is also a safe pick with less baggage than Newt and Christie and a fair amount
of experience on Capitol Hill. In addition to bowing to Trump, he’ll appeal to
social conservatives and bring message discipline to a campaign without any.

So Pence might not
be the sexiest pick for Trump, but he’s the safest. And considering the paucity
of respectable candidates willing to stand on a stage with Trump, this is as
good as it gets.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

The world is truly changing in Hampton Roads for LGBT Virginians, especially in the city of Norfolk where my good friend and former fellow HRBOR board member, Nicole Carry has been appointed to hold an interim seat on Norfolk City Council. Less than 13 years ago I was fired by a large law firm for being gay - Virginia still has zero employment protections for LGBT citizens - and now Pride Fest is the city's second largest festival, HRBOR has grown by leaps and bounds, and now an LGBT activist has been appointed to Norfolk City Council. Kudos to Nicole!! Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

The
City Council chose a Navy veteran and gay-rights activist Thursday to
temporarily fill a council seat in the ward that includes the world’s largest
naval base.

Nicole Carry, 46, is believed to be the first Navy veteran to
serve on Norfolk’s council in recent history, as well as the first gay council
member.

She had applied for the seat a month ago but was surprised
when she got it after a round of public interviews Thursday afternoon.

“Wow. Awesome!” Carry said when council members called her to
tell her she’d beaten out six other people for the post.

Later, she said she was proud of Norfolk for making a
progressive choice.

“It wasn’t that long ago I was in the Navy and being
witch-hunted,” said Carry, who identifies as lesbian. She served from 1991 to
1997, a time when service members could not be openly gay.

Carry will be sworn in oday and will be on the dais for
Tuesday’s regular council meeting. She replaces Andy Protogyrou, who served on
the council for six years but had to step down in the middle of a term because
he ran unsuccessfully for mayor.

Carry is expected to serve for less than two months and
participate in, at most, three meetings. A special election is scheduled for
Aug. 23 to let voters choose someone to represent Ward 1 until June 2018. Carry
does not plan to run for the seat .

“This
would never have happened on the last council,” Smigiel said. He noted that most applicants admitted they could accomplish
little in just a few weeks on the council – but not Carry.

An information-technology consultant who has lived in Norfolk
for more than 20 years, Carry has advocated for city government to be more
innovative in education and technology.

She hopes to get Norfolk schools to partner with Code
Virginia, a group that trains teachers on how to instruct students in computer
science and coding. And she has been pushing the city for about three years to
create an information-technology commission that she says would spur
technological innovation.

After publicly interviewing all seven candidates over nearly
two hours, the council discussed the choices behind closed doors for a few
minutes. They then returned to public session and unanimously appointed Carry,
the only woman among the seven.

“She just blew it out of the water,” Mayor Kenny Alexander
said, calling her a progressive whose IT and military experience and command of
issues clearly put her at the top of the list.

It has been truly amazing to see and be a part of the LGBT community going mainstream in this region even as the "godly folk" slowly are losing their power and influence.

On much more positive news, especially compared to the previous post, is that the "Nones" or non-religious are now the largest voting bloc in America. It's a reality that is apparently lost on the Republican Party which is taking self-prostitution to Christofascists to shockingly new levels. Indeed, Nones mow make up 21% of registered voters. The next closest group is Catholics at 20% who tie with far less rational white evangelicals 78% of whom say they would vote for Donald Trump if the presidential election was held today per Pew Research Center. The same Pew survey found that Nones are rallying to Hillary Clinton. Stated another way, the evangelicals favor hate, bigotry and religious based discrimination while the non-religious find such misogyny unacceptable. Here are highlights from the Wonk Blog:

More American
voters than ever say they are not religious, making the religiously
unaffiliated the nation's biggest voting bloc by faith for the first
time in a presidential election year. This marks a dramatic shift from
just eight years ago, when the non-religious were roundly outnumbered by
Catholics, white mainline Protestants and white evangelical Protestants.

These numbers
come from a new Pew Research Center survey,
which finds that "religious 'nones,' who have been growing rapidly as a share of the U.S.
population, now constitute one-fifth of all registered voters and more than a
quarter of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters." That
represents a 50 percent increase in the proportion of non-religious voters
compared with eight years ago, when they made up just 14 percent of the
overall electorate.

The
growth of the non-religious -- about 54 percent of whom are Democrats or
lean Democratic, compared with 23 percent at least leaning
Republican -- could provide a political counterweight to white
evangelical Protestants, a historically powerful voting bloc for Republicans.
In 2016, 35 percent of Republican voters identify as white evangelicals,
while 28 percent of Democratic voters say they have no religion at all.

[Unfortunately] Exit
polls of people who actually cast votes -- as opposed to preelection polls of
registered voters -- have traditionally shown that the unaffiliated
underperform at the ballot box relative to their raw numbers. . . . Smith also
points out that the unaffiliated tend to be younger than the religious and that
young people tend to vote less than older people.

Still, the Pew
study finds other evidence that religion may be becoming a less potent
force at the ballot box. In 2008, for instance, 72 percent of voters said it
was important for a president to have strong religious beliefs. That number is
down to 62 percent today.

Similarly,
Americans see religious institutions as playing a smaller role in the public
sphere. In 2008, 75 percent said that churches and other houses of worship
contributed a great deal to solving social problems. Today, that number has
fallen to 58 percent.

While no one has yet claimed responsibility, holiday revelers in Nice, France were targeted in a mass attack involving a tractor trailer running over pedestrians on a main street closed to traffic following a fireworks displace in honor of Bastille Day, a national holiday. Some estimates have as many as 77 dead and hundreds injured. All indications are that the driver of the truck intentionally struck as many people as possible and some reports state that the driver also shot into the crowd before being shot and killed by police. Other reports indicate that the trailer was filled with explosives and grenades. If this does prove to be another Islamic terror attack, it again shows that France and other secular nations with guarantees of freedom of and from religion are the antithesis to what religious fundamentalists want (including, Christian fundamentalist in America) . Here are some excerpts from the Washington Post:

A truck rammed into a crowd
celebrating Bastille Day in the French Riviera city of Nice on Thursday night,
killing at least 70 people in an apparent terrorist attack as the driver also
opened fire on revelers, French officials said.

The truck struck
the crowd on the Promenade des Anglais, a seaside walk in the center of the
city in southern France, authorities said. More than 50 people were reported
injured. The driver fired on the crowd before being shot to death by police,
officials said.

Christian
Estrosi, a former mayor of Nice and currently president of the Regional Council
of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, put the death toll at 75. He said in one of a
series of Twitter messages that the truck was carrying arms and explosives when
it struck the crowd at about 10:30 p.m. local time.

Estrosi told BFM
TV that “the driver fired on the crowd, according to the police who killed
him.” He added that the driver’s
behavior appeared to be “completely premeditated.”

There was no
immediate information on the identity of the driver or what motivated his
action.

Local
authorities were treating the incident as a terrorist attack and urging people
to stay home, the French television channel BFM TV reported. It occurred as a
large crowd was watching a fireworks display celebrating the French national
holiday.

In Washington,
President Obama released a statement Thursday night condemning “what appears to
be a horrific terrorist attack in Nice, France.” He said he has directed his
team to get in touch with French officials to assist with the investigation
into the attack.

"We stand in
solidarity and partnership with France, our oldest ally, as they respond to and
recover from this attack,” the statement said.

CNN quoted an
American witness as saying he saw one person in the large white truck and heard
gunfire, although it was not clear whether it came from the driver or was being
fired at the vehicle. The witness said
the driver accelerated as he was mowing people down.

If this turns out to be a religious extremist attack by a lone wolf or otherwise underscores my belief that taken as a whole, religion is a a toxic force in the world that is best eliminated.

In the wake of the Dallas shooting of police officers and the murder of black males that seemingly precipitated the Dallas tragedy, America is once again discussing the issue of racism in America and, as has been the historical precedent, far too many whites are pretending that no problem exists. It's akin to Virginia Republicans who claim the LGBT Virginians don't face discrimination in the state even as we continue to be fired from jobs solely because of our sexual orientation - and Republican refusal to support non-discrimination protections. Statistics show that blacks are disproportionately arrested and targeted by police. Likewise, go to any majority black public school and the odds are the school will be inferior to those in majority white neighborhoods. Pretending that these realities don't exist is delusional - and self-centered, a trait especially notable in the white Christian "godly folk" crowd who care nothing for anyone other than themselves. A column in the New York Times looks at the history of white delusion and self-deception. Here are excerpts:

In 1962, 85 percent of white Americans told Gallup that black children
had as good a chance as white kids of getting a good education. The next year,
in another Gallup survey, almost half of whites said that blacks had just as
good a chance as whites of getting a job.

In retrospect, we can see
that these white beliefs were delusional, and in other survey questions whites
blithely acknowledged racist attitudes. In 1963, 45 percent said that they
would object if a family member invited a black person home to dinner.

This
complacency among us white Americans has been a historical constant. Even in
the last decade, almost two-thirds of white Americans have said that blacks are
treated fairly by the police, and four out of five whites have said that black
children have the same chance as white kids of getting a good education. In
short, the history of white Americans’ attitudes toward race has always been
one of self-deception.

As it happens, the trauma surgeon running the Dallas emergency room
last Thursday when seven police officers were brought in with gunshot wounds is
a black man, Brian Williams. He fought to save the lives of those officers and wept
for those he couldn’t help. But in other contexts he dreads the police: He told The Associated Press that after one
traffic stop he was stretched out spread-eagle on the hood of a police car.

Williams shows his
admiration for police officers by sometimes picking up their tabs at
restaurants, but he also expressed his feelings for the police this way to The Washington Post: “I support you. I
defend you. I will care for you. That doesn’t mean I will not fear you.”

That’s a narrative that many
white Americans are oblivious to. Half of white Americans today say that discrimination against whites is
as big a problem as discrimination against blacks. Really? That contradicts
overwhelming research showing that blacks are more likely to be suspended from
preschool, to be prosecuted for drug use, to receive longer sentences, to be
discriminated against in housing, to be denied job interviews, to be rejected
by doctors’ offices, to suffer bias in almost every measurable sector of daily
life.

In my mind, an even bigger civil rights outrage in America than abuses
by some police officers may be an education system that routinely sends the neediest black students
to underfunded, third-rate schools, while directing bountiful resources to
affluent white schools.

“If America is to be
America, we have to engage in a larger conversation than just the criminal
justice system,” notes Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation. “If
you were to examine most of the institutions that underpin our democracy —
higher education, K-12 education, the housing system, the transportation
system, the criminal justice system — you will find systemic racism embedded in
those systems.”

A
starting point is for us whites to wake from our ongoing mass delusions, to
recognize that in practice black lives have not mattered as much as white
lives, and that this is an affront to values that we all profess to believe in.

The anti-transgender Gloucester County School Board - the face of hate and ignorance

Having been rebuffed by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals three times now, the Gloucester County School Board has appealed its losses on the issue of the treatment of transgender students to the United States Supreme Court. In addition, it has asked the high court to stay the 4th Circuit's ruling in favor of 17 year old Gavin Grimm pending the Court's decision of the case. I'm hoping that SCOTUs both refuses the stay and refuses to take the case - a possibility heightened by the Court's current 8 justice membership. The bottom line issue driving this case is the school board's desire to pander to Christofascists who began lobbying the board when it was learned that the board planned to accommodate Grimm's needs. Take away the religious extremists and the case would never have occurred. The Washington Post looks at the board's latest effort at self-prostitution to the forces of hate. Here are excerpts:

A school board that has been
ordered to allow a transgender student to use the boys’ high school bathroom
has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the order, arguing that it will
cause “irreparable harm” and violate the privacy of students.

The Gloucester County, Va. School Board, which is being sued
for passing a policy that barred a transgender student from the boys’ bathroom,
said it hopes the U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in on the matter. In the
interim, it is asking the high court to allow it to continue banning the
transgender boy from the boys’ room while attorneys prepare a writ of
certiorari to the nation’s highest court. Currently, the court’s order would
mean transgender students could use the bathroom corresponding with their gender
identity when school returns for the coming academic year.

Gavin Grimm, a 17-year-old rising senior at Gloucester High
filed a lawsuit against the School Board last year after the board passed a
policy requiring students to use bathrooms based on their “biological gender.”
Grimm alleged that the policy barring him from the boys’ bathroom violated his
civil rights and ran afoul of Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in public
schools.

The
U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit sided with the teen in April,
deferring to the Obama administration’s position that transgender students are
entitled to use bathrooms that match their gender identity under Title IX. It
was the highest court to rule on the question of how to accommodate transgender
students in public schools. A federal judge later granted Grimm a preliminary
injunction ordering the School Board to allow Grimm to use the boys’ bathroom
while the case proceeds.

In
a filing to the high court Wednesday, the School Board again asked for the case
to be paused — and to keep Grimm out of the boys’ bathroom — until the case
concludes.

Joshua Block, an attorney for the
American Civil Liberties Union, also has disputed the notion that allowing
Grimm to use the boys’ bathroom would cause the sort of harm the school board
describes.

“The only thing this injunction does is let Gavin use the
boys’ restroom,” Block said last week. “The notion that simply allowing one boy
to use the restroom during his senior year of high school would cause the sky
to fall is impossible to take seriously.”

To the Christofascists the sky will fall because they will lose the ability to punish transgender students who fail to conform to the hate and ignorance based beliefs of the "godly folk."

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Traditionally big business and Wall Street firms are viewed as the stalwart supporters of the Republican Party and often send personnel in droves to the GOP conventions. Not so this year based on a piece in Politico. It seems that many corporate CEO's and Wall Street players see the GOP convention in Cleveland as potentially too toxic and potentially insulting to potential clients. Indeed, one Goldman Sachs referred to the coming convention as a "shit show" to be avoided. In addition to Trump's own divisiveness, the GOP platform as it has emerged so far is the most extreme and hate-filled of any ever put forward. Here are highlights from the Politico piece:

Wall Street executives are hitting
the sell button on the GOP convention in Cleveland next week.

Bankers typically use the
quadrennial Republican Party gathering to schmooze clients, host parties and
flaunt their connections to the nominee and other senior officials. In 2012,
they flooded the Tampa Bay area to celebrate one of the industry’s favorite
sons, Mitt Romney, getting the nomination.

But with real estate mogul Donald
Trump running on an anti-trade, populist platform — while sporting sky-high
unpopularity ratings — many bankers and traders want nothing to do with the
convention this year.

Neither do most corporate CEOs. The
prospect of Trump bashing trade deals and talking about building a wall with
Mexico, coupled with the threat of potentially disruptive protests, is largely
keeping the financial world away from Cleveland.

“With Trump you have what is a
fairly divisive campaign and you have the potential of unnecessarily offending
a whole bunch of people if you show up there in a prominent way,” said Matt
McDonald, a partner at consulting firm Hamilton Place Strategies, which does
business with some of the nation’s biggest banks. “On top of that, a lot of the
people that you might want to get in front of for one reason or another are not
going to be there.”

McDonald cited the long roster of
senior Republican lawmakers skipping the convention as one major reason
financial executives don’t feel the need to raise the flag in Cleveland.

So far, no major Wall Street CEOs
have said they plan to attend the convention. JPMorgan Chase, which played a
sponsorship role in 2012, declined to do so this year. Goldman Sachs will also
be largely absent, as will Morgan Stanley and Bank of America. Citigroup plans
only a low-key presence.

And unlike in 2012, when rank-and-file Wall Streeters were all over Tampa, many
bankers and lobbyists who typically make the rounds will be taking a pass. “I’m
just going to skip it because, frankly, I don’t see the point in going,” said a
senior lobbyist for one of the largest banks in the nation. “Usually there is
pressure to at least show up, but with Trump you get a pass. No one is going to
care if you don’t go.”

At Goldman, typically one of the
most politically engaged banks on Wall Street, there may be almost no one at
all going to Cleveland. “I asked around and couldn’t find a single person who
planned to be there,” said one Goldman executive who declined to be quoted by
name. “Most people who want to see someone from the Trump campaign can do it
some other place at some other time. And the potential is there for Cleveland
to be a complete shit show. It’s a real problem for executives because if you
go, you are certainly going to offend women and minority groups within your own
company.”

Corporate unease with the GOP
convention extends well beyond Wall Street. Google and Coca-Cola, after playing
significant roles at Romney’s convention in 2012, backed away this year after
pressure from activists.

But from a fundraising perspective,
Wall Street's absence from Cleveland could be the most ominous sign for the
Trump campaign. Because while Trump may not want high-profile Wall Street
executives endorsing him — he has run as a populist who wants to fix a “rigged”
system — he desperately needs their money.

Wall Street is typically a
fundraising bonanza for GOP presidential candidates. Romney, a former executive
at private equity firm Bain Capital, raised over $60 million from the financial
industry in 2012, compared with just over $20 million for President Barack
Obama.
Many Wall Street executives staying away from Cleveland are taking their cues
from some of the biggest names in the industry who have distanced themselves
from Trump. Paul Singer, founder of giant hedge-fund group Elliott Management
and among the most influential donors in the GOP, said at the Aspen Ideas
conference in Colorado last month that a Trump presidency would be a disaster.

“The most impactful of the economic
policies that I recall him coming out for are these anti-trade policies,” he
said. “And I think if he actually stuck to those policies and gets elected
president, it’s close to a guarantee of a global depression, widespread global
depression.”

Hank Paulson, the former CEO of
Goldman Sachs and Treasury secretary under George W. Bush, also recently said
he could not back Trump and would instead be supporting Clinton. . . . Paulson
wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. “The GOP, in putting Trump at the top of the
ticket, is endorsing a brand of populism rooted in ignorance, prejudice, fear
and isolationism.”

The risk of violence in the
convention is secondary as security will be strong inside the perimeter. This
is more a function of whether Mr. Trump and the ideas he most represents are
homogenous with a company's brand and business plan."

But Clinton is hoovering up Wall Street cash as bankers hedge against the risks
of a Trump presidency. Clinton and groups supporting her campaign raised $32
million from the securities and investment industry through June to virtually
nothing for Trump.

And Philadelphia is likely to be
friendlier terrain for bank lobbyists and industry executives hoping to play
roles in a Clinton White House. “I’m skipping Cleveland but going to Philly,”
the senior lobbyist from the large bank said. “But that’s partly just because Philly
is on the way to visit my kids at camp.”

With Donald Trump's strongest support coming from working class white males with a high school education or less, it quickly becomes obvious that Trump is preying on these citizens who have lost out to the forces of globalization and the growing requirement of a college degree for meaningful long term employment. Hence Trump's targeting of immigrants, minorities and non-Christians who are easy targets of the angst and hatred that are the core of Trump's base. Make no mistake, by "Make America Great Again," Trump means the reinstatement of unchallenged white privilege. A lengthy piece in the New York Times looks at Trump's pandering to these voters and the manner in which he has mainstreamed hate and bigotry and won the cheers of white supremacist organizations. Here are article highlights which I find very disturbing. Here are article excerpts:

In countless collisions of color and creed, Donald
J. Trump’s name evokes an easily understood message of racial
hostility. Defying modern conventions of political civility and language, Mr.
Trump has breached the boundaries that have long constrained Americans’ public
discussion of race.

His rallies vibrate with
grievances that might otherwise be expressed in private: about “political
correctness,” about the ranch house down the street overcrowded with day
laborers, and about who is really to blame for the death of a black teenager in Ferguson, Mo.
In a country where the wealthiest and most influential citizens are still
mostly white, Mr. Trump is voicing the bewilderment and anger of whites who do
not feel at all powerful or privileged.

But
in doing so, Mr. Trump has also opened the door to assertions of white identity
and resentment in a way not seen so broadly in American culture in over half a
century, according to those who track patterns of racial tension and antagonism
in American life.

On the internet, Mr. Trump is invoked by anonymous followers
brandishing stark expressions of hate and anti-Semitism, surprisingly amplified
this month when Mr. Trump tweeted a graphic depicting Hillary Clinton’s
face with piles of cash and a six-pointed star that many viewed as a Star of David.

“I think what we really find
troubling is the mainstreaming of these really offensive ideas,” said Jonathan
Greenblatt, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks
hate groups. “It’s allowed some of the worst ideas into the public conversation
in ways we haven’t seen anything like in recent memory.”

The
resentment among whites feels both old and distinctly of this moment. It is
shaped by the reality of demographic change, by a decade and a half of war in
the Middle East, and by unease with the newly confident and confrontational
activism of young blacks furious over police violence. It is mingled with
patriotism, pride, fear and a sense that an America without them at its center
is not really America anymore.

In
making the explicit assertion of white identity and grievance more widespread,
Mr. Trump has galvanized the otherwise marginal world of avowed white
nationalists and self-described “race realists.” They hail him as a fellow
traveler who has driven millions of white Americans toward an intuitive embrace
of their ideals: that race should matter as much to white people as it does to
everyone else. He has freed Americans, those activists say, to say what they
really believe.

Demographers began to speak of a not-too-distant future when
non-Hispanic whites would be a minority of the American population. In states
like Texas and California, and in hundreds of cities and counties around the
country, that future has arrived. It is
the changes that are taking place that have created the national constituency
for Donald Trump,” Mr. Buchanan said.

For many Americans,
President Obama’s election, made possible in part by the rising strength of
nonwhite voters, signaled a transcendent moment in the country’s knotty racial
history. But for some whites, the election of the country’s first black
president was also a powerful symbol of their declining pre-eminence in
American society.

Few
politicians were better prepared than Mr. Trump to harness these shifts. While
open racism against blacks remains among the most powerful taboos in American
politics, Americans feel more free expressing worries about illegal immigrants
and dislike of Islam, survey research shows. In Mr. Trump’s hands, the two
ideas merged: During Mr. Obama’s presidency, he has become America’s most
prominent “birther,” loudly questioning Mr. Obama’s
American citizenship and suggesting he could be Muslim.

In June 2015, two weeks after Mr. Trump entered the presidential race,
he received an endorsement that would end most campaigns: The Daily Stormer
embraced his candidacy.

Founded
in 2013 by a 32-year-old neo-Nazi named Andrew Anglin, The Daily Stormer is
among the most prominent online gathering places for white nationalists and
anti-Semites, with sections devoted to “The Jewish Problem” and “Race War.” Mr.
Anglin explained that although he had some disagreements with him, Mr. Trump
was the only candidate willing to speak the truth about Mexicans. . . . across
this spectrum, in Mr. Trump’s descriptions of immigrants as vectors of disease,
violent crime and social decay, they heard their own dialect.

Mr. Taylor, who has written that blacks “left entirely to their own
devices” are incapable of civilization, and whose magazine, American
Renaissance, once published an essay arguing that blacks were genetically more prone to crime, wrote on
his blog that Mr. Trump had handled the attacks on him “in the nicest way.”

[O]n the flatlands of social media, the border between Mr. Trump and
white supremacists easily blurs. He has retweeted supportive messages from
racist or nationalist Twitter accounts to his nine million followers. Last
fall, he retweeted a graphic with fictitious crime statistics claiming that
81 percent of white homicide victims in 2015 were killed by blacks. (No such statistic was available for 2015 at the time;
the actual figure for 2014 was 15 percent, according to the F.B.I.)

In
January and February he retweeted messages from a user with the handle @WhiteGenocideTM,
whose profile picture is of George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the
American Nazi Party. A couple of days later, in quick succession, he retweeted
two more accounts featuring white nationalist or Nazi themes.

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Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

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